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Will.Dickey@Jacksonville.com Griffin Furlong graduates as valedictorian from First Coast High on June 4 at the Veterans Memorial Arena.

Griffin Furlong gives his speech during graduation from First Coast High School Wednesday, June 4, 2014 at the Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville.

The older brother gave advice and the little brother would listen.

Sometimes they’d talk about what the other was doing wrong. Other times, the only sound was a baseball popping into a mitt. They seldom spoke about things going on away from that game of catch.

Griffin Furlong, three years and 11 months younger than his brother, Sean, has always had baseball. It was a constant in their lives. Not much else was.

They bounced around homeless shelters in and around Louisville, too embarrassed to let many in on their secret and too young to understand how much those games of catch would mean all these years later.

“Through everything that happened, even being homeless and going through all that stuff, me and Sean actually still played baseball, kept at it,” Griffin Furlong said. “We still wanted to play the game. We’d throw probably every day. He always wanted to push me.”

Griffin Furlong’s story has become international news. Across social media and on TV, he’s been dubbed the “Homeless Valedictorian.” People see the headline, they click the link, turn up the volume. What greets them seems too good to be true.

He volunteered at the Humane Society and as an umpire at a local Little League. He was captain of the First Coast baseball team. He graduated with a 4.65 grade point average, first in his class of 523. People were so inspired by his story that they donated nearly $5,000 a day over the course of three weeks through GoFundMe.

Griffin Furlong gave up pursuing a baseball scholarship. Instead, more than $103,000 raised through crowdfunding will cover college tuition to Florida State, with plenty left over to pay it forward.

Always in the position of needing help, Griffin Furlong, 18, will ultimately be in position to offer it himself.

NOWHERE TO LIVE

Furlong’s mother died on Nov. 1, 2002, following a seven-year battle with leukemia, setting off a chain reaction of bad luck and heartbreak that spanned more than a decade.

Griffin, Sean and their father, Brian, spent more than 2 1/2 years, off and on, in and out of homeless shelters in Louisville.

They still managed to play baseball.

In the street, they played catch. And when they started organized baseball, Griffin and Sean played Little League at Louisville’s Lyndon Ball Park.

For a little bit, they got around in a 1989 Plymouth, given to their father by a friend. The majority of time, they hitched rides from friends or took a bus. It was roughly 12 miles one way to the ballpark from the shelters they stayed at, Volunteers of America Family Emergency Shelter and Wayside Christian Mission. They always found a way there and back.

Baseball helped not only Griffin and Sean, but was one of the few distractions that allowed their father to forget about things for a little while, too.

“The whole never-give-up thing, we’ve been doing that ever since we were little,” Sean Furlong said.

Looking for a fresh start and out of options in Louisville, the Furlongs got a break in 2007 when their grandmother called, saying that she’d found a rental house in Jacksonville.

“We were living in a hotel and got the call from my grandma. That was one of the best days of my life, actually,” Griffin Furlong said. “To actually live in a house again. Coming down here to start a new life. Definitely a better life than what it was in Louisville.”

BASEBALL THERAPY

Some people golf or go fishing to relax. Griffin and Sean grabbed their gloves and a ball and found someplace to throw. As unrelenting as life had been, the brothers could shrug it off for a bit and just be kids. Sean said that some of the best times growing up involved baseball.

“Through all that time, you know, we can’t have friends come stay the night or anything,” Sean Furlong said. “So me and Griffin would spend all the time throwing the baseball, or going to a basketball court down the street.”

Sean Furlong, 22, played for three years at First Coast High, with his peak a no-hitter and a one-hitter in back-to-back games. He would later confide in coach Tim Moses about the family’s path since their mother’s death, from being homeless to evictions to their father struggling to hold down stable employment. Sean even worked an extra job in college at Florida State to pay for Griffin to attend travel baseball camps with the hope that exposure would help him land a baseball scholarship.

Last year, Sean and Griffin made their story public.

Both felt relieved to be able to finally talk about their struggles beyond their small circle of friends and family. Purging years of emotion was cathartic.

But Sean’s goal was for more than just therapy. He wanted Griffin to land some sort of scholarship so that his future in college would be set. Baseball had provided a handful of options, although they were at NCAA Division III programs with no scholarship money.

“I was shocked,” said current First Coast baseball coach Larry Reed. “I found out earlier in the year. He never mentioned it. He’s one of the finest young men I’ve ever been around. He never let a lot of things get to him. He was a pretty good little baseball player, too.”

GRIFFIN HEADS TO FSU

Those who heard their story were stunned to learn of what they’d been through, the homelessness, living in hotels, with relatives or with friends of friends. Their story went viral, beyond anything Griffin or Sean expected.

On May 21, Griffin Furlong opened a GoFundMe account in hopes of raising $20,000 for college tuition. A total of 1,850 people from all over the world helped take Furlong’s account from nothing to $103,591.

It took just 21 days.

The brothers will crisscross this summer for a couple of months. Sean is set to graduate from Florida State in August with a double major in economics and history. He hopes to move back to Jacksonville and start working after that. Griffin leaves for Tallahassee this month.

Plenty of time to knock the dirt out of the baseball gloves and toss the ball around one afternoon.

“It’s great to let them know his story because it’s remarkable,” said Fletcher baseball coach Tim Moses, who coached both Sean and Griffin at First Coast.